Upgrade FX 6300 to FX 8350 or i5 4590 for Gaming

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

I just upgraded my GPU from a Radeon 7850 to an GTX 970. The main reason I upgraded was for better Far Cry 4 performance but I play lots of other games. I was looking at system specs for Dying Light because I plan to buy it and the FX 8350 is the recommended AMD CPU for that game. That's above my FX 6300 and I don't want my brand new 970 to be held back by my processor. The new GPU will be here today so I haven't tested it out yet but I'm thinking it might be time to upgrade other things too.

I can buy a FX 8350 right now for $169 from Amazon. If I go that way that's the end of my expenses and effort to change everything out.

My 6300 has worked well for me but I always read that i5's are the best CPU for gaming. I can buy an i5 4590 for $201.99. I kind of feel that if I'm going to upgrade my CPU I may as well go all the way and get an i5 to get the best performance out of my 970. I picked the 4590 because I don't plan to overclock.

If I go with an i5 I need a new motherboard. It looks like these range anywhere from $60 to $200 on Amazon. I don't think I need a high end motherboard since I'm not overclocking and only running 1 GPU. I would also need to spend another $100 for a new copy of Windows 8. I bought the system builder version of Windows when I built my system and it says it's tied to the original motherboard.

All together the FX 8350 would be a $169.00 upgrade. The i5 would cost around $400 when I factor in the new motherboard and Windows. Is the i5 a big enough improvement over the 8350 to justify the extra $231 and hassle of rebuilding everything? This computer is used for 1080p gaming.

Sakkura · Feb 17, 2015

The FX-8350 isn't really worth it for Dying Light. You can just overclock your FX-6300 for the same performance.

Even a Core i5 isn't really worth it for that game. It might be worth it for other games, but for the most part an overclocked FX-6300 will do well.

http://www.techspot.com/review/956-dying-light-benchmarks/page5.html

rolli59 · Feb 17, 2015

If you have a good AM3+ motherboard there is nothing wrong going with the 8350 but if not suitable then I5 would make sense. So really what motherboard do you have?

WildCard999 · Feb 17, 2015

I would hold off on the I5 for now since Intel Skylake should be coming out this year. I know it says that you don't plan on overclocking but the least expensive way to go is to grab a really good cpu air cooler or closed loop water cooler and overclock your CPU so that it won't bottleneck your GPU. Heres a few coolers I'd reccomend:

Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212
Corsair H80i
Noctua DH-14

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

I'm with sakkura - if your board is good enough to run a 8350 then its sure as sh1t good enough to overclock a 6300 to well past 4ghz.
Drop $20 on a raijentek themis cooler & it'll be job done.
What is your mb by the way??

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

rolli59 :

I have a Gigabyte GA-970A-D3. I know it's in the 970 series and it should be in the 990 series but I did find an the 8530 on the list of supported CPUs for that motherboard.

I tried to overclock my 6300 on it about 2 years ago but was not able to do it. I did it in AMD overdrive to test and was able to get it stable at 4.2Ghz. This was my first attempt at overclocking but I was not able to do it on my BIOS. I tried following some instructions from this website but I just kept getting crashes when I tried to boot into Windows.

Honestly I would just spend the $275-$300 for an i5 4590 and and new motherboard if it would be a big improvement. I don't want to upgrade my CPU or GPU again for around 4 years so I'd like something with some longevity. Having to spend that extra $100 to buy Windows again is a killer.

If neither of these CPUs would give me a noticeable performance improvement with my 970 at 1080p I'd rather wait another year or so to upgrade my CPU and motherboard.

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

WildCard999 :

I did buy a Cooler Master Hyper EVO 212 when I first built my PC with the intentions of overclocking my 6300. I'm still running that cooler but obviously I don't know how to overclock on my board even with instructions. That was the first computer I have ever built and I've never been able to figure out how to successfully overclock it outside of AMD Overdrive.

I would be happy to use a software solution like Overdrive but my overclock just resets every time I reboot my computer.

rolli59 · Feb 17, 2015

king3pj :

rolli59 :

I have a Gigabyte GA-970A-D3. I know it's in the 970 series and it should be in the 990 series but I did find an the 8530 on the list of supported CPUs for that motherboard.

I tried to overclock my 6300 on it about 2 years ago but was not able to do it. I did it in AMD overdrive to test and was able to get it stable at 4.2Ghz. This was my first attempt at overclocking but I was not able to do it on my BIOS. I tried following some instructions from this website but I just kept getting crashes when I tried to boot into Windows.

Honestly I would just spend the $275-$300 for an i5 4590 and and new motherboard if it would be a big improvement. I don't want to upgrade my CPU or GPU again for around 4 years so I'd like something with some longevity. Having to spend that extra $100 to buy Windows again is a killer.

If neither of these CPUs would give me a noticeable performance improvement with my 970 at 1080p I'd rather wait another year or so to upgrade my CPU and motherboard.

Only GB 970 board I would put 8350 on is the UD3P since all other ones will not handle it overclocked and sometimes will have problems with it at heavy loads stock. Your board will though handle mild OC on the 6300.

WildCard999 · Feb 17, 2015

If you look online theres plenty of videos on how to overclock, heres a video on how to OC the 6300 to 4.3ghz : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9uXysmgPi8

NightAntilli · Feb 17, 2015

You need to change your settings in BIOS. Overdrive is only used to test stability of a certain overclock while in Windows.

FX-6300 overclocking is quite easy. It should be able to reach 3.9-4 GHz on stock voltage.

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

I can pretty much walk you through bios over clocking mate if its running eufibios?? In which case it will be the same bios as the ud3p anyway??
Get it up to 4ghz & it'll perform pretty much the same as an 8350 anyway.
The i5 WILL give you a performance increase but not $300 worth!

junkeymonkey · Feb 17, 2015

I would also feel like rolli59 and do the 8350 first and run it until its played out in your eyes seeing you now just use a 6300[and did all you can with it ] then after that just go to a intel build cause the 9000 220w chips won't be worth it ...

if you feel you want a new system then just invest in a intel and have the newest up to the date stuff and not reinvest in the past with a fresh am3+

I would go with just a upgrade of the chip first [opinion]

that's how I did years ago had a 6100 and moved up to the 8300 then when I was ready to do a new build went intel cause amd don't offer anything new and fresh plus 220w don't impress me at all when the intel offers a better chip @85w

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

I don't know what kind of bios it has. Here is the link to the Amazon listing.
http://

I tried following guides and videos I found on Tom's Hardware when I first built the PC 2 years ago. The stuff I found in guides didn't seem to match what I was seeing in my BIOS. I also had a issue with my computer crashing every time I booted into Windows when my 1600MHz ram was set to 800 in the BIOS after trying this overclock. I had a hell of a time getting everything to boot back up smoothly with my RAM running at the correct speed. To do it I had to reset the BIOS back to how it was new.

My computer was
Gigabyte GA-970A-D3
FX 6300
Gigabyte 2GB 7850
8GB 1600MHz Corsair RAM
2TB WD Hard Drive
240GB Kingston SSD
600W Power Corsair power supply.

Everything is the same except I now will have a factory overclocked EVGA GTX 970 instead of the 7850. It sounds like I'm staying put with the 6300 for at least another year. I would like to try overclocking again if you can help me. If not I may just try the 6300 at stock speeds and see if I get the kind of performance I want with my 970 for now.

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

Yeah mate - I'm running a 970 with a 6300@4ghz and performance is generally very good.
It doesn't push the 970 to massively high frames like an haswell would but max settings at 1080p 60fps locked is a definite given on 99% of titles.
There are the odd badly optimised stuff lime dead rising,ac unity,dying light where you'll be lowering settings a little but that's just because they're poorly optimised.
You say when you set ram at 800mhz it wouldn't boot so what speed is your ram currently running at??
Post a screen clip of the memory & SPD tabs in cpu-z when you get chance.

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

That's all I want. I don't need higher than 1080p/60. I game on a 1080p TV. I always run VSYNC because I get bad screen tearing with most games in my setup if I don't.

I will get the pictures you asked for when I get home. I'm on a work machine now so I don't have access to it. I can tell you that my RAM is back to 1600MHz now. My motherboard defaults to 1333MHz even though my RAM is 1600MHz. In the motherboard settings it is my understanding that the BIOS shows half the speed you are running at. When I set my BIOS to 800MHz it shows as 1600MHz in windows. When I was trying to overclock I must have screwed something up because the computer wouldn't boot unless I let the RAM go back to the default 667MHz in the BIOS. After a day of thinking I fried my computer I reset the BIOS and decided not to screw with overclocking anymore. This got the computer running normally again. Once I got it running normally I got the RAM back to 800MHz in the BIOS and it shows correctly as 1600MHz in Windows but this is with no overclock.

I would be happy to try overclocking again if someone can tell me exactly what to disable in my BIOS and give me some suggested values to try for with my voltage and multiplier. I understand that you have to tinker with the voltage until it runs smoothly in things like Prime 95 testing.

I clearly don't know what I'm doing though. I spent an entire weekend 2 years ago trying to do this right. Before I step into that madness again I have a big question though.

Would going for something semi conservative like 4Ghz really give me noticeably better gaming performance than just leaving it at the stock 3.5GHz and 4.1GHz boost? Also, how well does this boost technology work? I'm running the EVO Hyper 212 cooler so my CPU should be staying cool enough to use boost speeds right? When I'm gaming with boost enabled is my CPU already going above 3.5GHz when it needs to in order to keep performance high?

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

^ the default boost clock on a 6300 is 3.8ghz not 4.1.
The boost clock can work well depending on what you're doing but generally it'll raise 2 cores under heavy load & actually drop the other 4 cores to 3ghz or so to keep its 95w tdp.
In apps / games that use more than 2 cores this is more detrimental than anything IMO.
Getting all 6 cores up to the boost speed of 3.8ghz or above will give better performance in anything multi-threaded - that's pretty much a fact.
I'll have a look to see what info I can find on your bios - it appears to be a one-off touch bios that isn't used on many boards.
We'll just look at an overclock on stock voltages - 3.8ghz is a definite IMO,90% of chips will push 4ghz.some (like my cherry-picked one) will do 4.2ghz or so.
Once you start voltage tinkering things get more complicated+your board has no vrm cooling from what I've seen.

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

Thanks for all the help man. I think getting it up to 3.8 would be good. Especially if we don't have to mess with voltage to do it since I know this isn't really an overclocking motherboard. If it's as simple as turning off some BIOS settings and changing the multiplier it's much more likely that I will actually be able to do this without messing everything up. I would be willing to change the voltage but i think that's where I got into problems before since my MB isn't meant for that.

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

king3pj :

madmatt30 :

Thanks for all the help man. I think getting it up to 3.8 would be good. Especially if we don't have to mess with voltage to do it since I know this isn't really an overclocking motherboard. If it's as simple as turning off some BIOS settings and changing the multiplier it's much more likely that I will actually be able to do this without messing everything up. I would be willing to change the voltage but i think that's where I got into problems before since my MB isn't meant for that.

does this bear any relation to what your bios looks like??

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

I haven't been in it in about 2 years and I have another Gigabyte MB in a computer I built for non-gaming puproses but I believe it looks more like this.

5716d1363407978-amd-gigabyte-rev-3-uefi-bios-missing-settings-eg-cpu-nb-voltage-voltagesettings.jpg

It's colored like that and has categories along the top. If that isn't my exact BIOS I think it's very similar.

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

then you have a newer revision board than the link you posted mate,Im assuming your board has the vrm heatsinks on & its a 1.3/1,4 revision as thats exactly the same bios as the ud3p - which makes it easy for me.
you want M.I.T tweaker tab open
advanced frequency settings
cpu clock ratio - change to manual
advanced cpu core features
change cpu clock ratio to 19
disable core performance boost
disable core c6 state

save & exit - thats it

download & uinzip prime
http://mersenneforum.org/gimps/p95v285.win64.zip
download & install hwinfo64
http://www.hwinfo.com/files/hw64_450.exe
downlaod & install amd overdrive
http://download.amd.com/Desktop/aod_setup_4.3.1.0698.exe

run hwinfo64 - sensor only
open amd over drive
cpu status tab

line hwinfo & amd overdrive up on desktop so you can clearly see both app screens

open prime95,do a straight blend test run
on the hwinfo tab,click on the clock oitem at bottom of screen to reset .
keep an eye on the clock speeds for all 6 cores while porime is running,current/minimum/maximum/average should all be sitting at 3800mhz after the prime run has finished with very little (maybe a few mhz deviation here or there)
also keep an eye on temp 2 & 3 just above the vcore option in hwinfo ,one of these 2 temps will be the vrm temp sensor - if it approaches or goes past 50c then stop the prime test.
in amd overdrive you just want to keep a check on the thermal margin temp boxes - with a 212 evo Id expect this to be between 20 & 30c at 3.8ghz under a prime load.

If all checks out good drop back to bios,up the multiplier to 19.5 (or straight to 20 for 4ghz if you like) save/reboot & test again.
You wont crash out your bios doing this - worst case if you cant hit 4ghz on stock volts it will freeze or blue screen running prime ,or maybe just will drop a core error.
You will get the opportunity to boot back to bios & drop the multiplier back if it fails.

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

I think I did read that Amazon was sending multiple revisions out under that listing. I posted that link directly from my Amazon order history.

I remember some people saying they had to update the BIOS to use it with AM3+ FX chips depending on which revision they got but I don't think I had to do that.

I'm glad to hear that my motherboard is better for overclocking than we originally thought. Obviously I want the best performance possible but I still want to stay somewhat conservative since I got my computer into a point where Windows couldn't boot last time I tried this. Again, it took me a whole weekend to figure out how to get it to boot again.

I probably didn't have some of the settings besides the voltage and multiplier correct because everything worked with Prime95 testing when I did it in AMD Overdrive.

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

steps above mate - cant go wrong - check your board to see if its a revision with the heatsinks though mate - bigger overclock with a voltage jump is entirely possibel if so.

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

I just got home from work with my GTX 970. I opened the case and took a look at my motherboard. It says revision 3.0 on it. I don't know how to tell if it has heat sinks though.

madmatt30 · Feb 17, 2015

If its a revision 3 it does

Vrm heatsink block is between the CPU & the rear USB ports etc.
Its the silver metal block near the top right of the pic.

king3pj · Feb 17, 2015

madmatt30 :

Yes. That is my exact board.

Upgrade FX 6300 to FX 8350 or i5 4590 for Gaming

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